SAN JOSE — A federal jury Monday awarded $11.3 million to a man shot in the back and rendered a paraplegic by a city police officer.

A jury found last week that San Jose police officer Dondi West erred when she shot Hung Lam during a confrontation. Lam acted erratically and wielded a knife during a January 2014 standoff on Cape Horn Drive.

A next door neighbor, a retired San Mateo County sheriff, witnessed the shooting and testified that Lam did not pose a serious threat to police. After a three week trial, the jury found Lam bore some responsibility for the shooting, but decided that most of the blame lay with the officer.

Attorney John Burris said in a statement that the shooting was unjustified and “sentenced Hung Lam to a lifetime in a wheelchair, as a paraplegic.”

Burris and an attorney for the city of San Jose could not immediately be reached for comment.

Louis Hansen covers housing issues for the Bay Area News Group and is based at The Mercury News. He's won national awards for his investigations and feature stories. Prior to joining the organization, he was an investigative reporter at The Virginian-Pilot, where he covered state government, the military and criminal justice.

"There is a general recognition that we don't need these military-style weapons in New Zealand, so it's very easy to win cross-party support for this," said Mark Mitchell, who was defense minister in the previous, center-right government and who supports the ban initiated by the center-left-led Labour Party.